Welcome!

If you're looking for offbeat fiction, fantasy, scifi, essay, or even rare bits of poetry, you've come to the right place. Enjoy!

Shadow and Shade

"I stayed up all night finishing Shadow and Shade, a fascinating fantasy world of magic, family, and what happens when the two collide. A tough and enchanting tale that will have you listening to the forest and talking to the wolves. I can't wait to see what Gerrard writes next!" Rebecca Cantrell, New York Times bestselling author of The World Beneath

Tweet tweet!

Nothing but tartare from now on

Continuing the theme of what I would be like if I woke up infected with vampirism

“What do you want?” I asked.

“Nothing. You’re not nearly as much fun as a vampire as I thought you would be.”

Then he was gone. With that sense of knowing that you get when you’re having a dream, I knew that he had walked away towards the middle of the city. I didn’t see it happen, but I just knew.

That was what it felt like. Dreaming. A bad dream, in some ways worse than the ones where you’re about to get eaten by the zombies. This time, I was the predator. Everyone I walked past looked like a tasty morsel. I could see the warmth coming off their bodies, especially in the winter cold. As I walked past people, I tasted the salty taste of raw meat and felt the wet taste of salivating. My fangs started to sharpen. Oh God.

I locked myself in my house and called in sick from work. Then I went upstairs and sat down in a corner in my bedroom with my arms tight around my body. I was getting hungry. It felt like there was something crawling around inside my stomach. A hole inside me was widening.

I had raw steak in the house, and raw chicken. I ate them both. First the steak. The meat was good, but the blood was better. It tasted like shit but it was shit that I needed. I knew it instantly. I did a bike tour once, and at the end of the first day they gave us a spaghetti dinner so that we could restore our carbs and be ready for the second day. Pasta never smelled so good, and I had to fight to keep from shoveling it right into my mouth. Same thing. The blood tasted good, and halfway through I lost patience with having to eat meat to get it. I lost control, squeezed the blood out of the steak like I was wringing a washcloth and licked it off the plate and my fingers. Then I wolfed the steak down.

I went into the bathroom by the kitchen to clean myself off. I looked at myself in the mirror. My heart skipped a beat. Yes, I could still see myself. But I know why vampires hate mirrors. They don’t like what they see. I saw a dead man. The heart was still beating and the brain was still working, but I could see the infection crawling through my body like ants crawling through dirt.